


Enough

by NotManTheLessButNatureMore



Series: Cormoran the (Younger) Giant [4]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: And Nick is a good friend, But it’s not easy to see, Gen, Leda is a good mother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 13:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17850056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotManTheLessButNatureMore/pseuds/NotManTheLessButNatureMore
Summary: One of Cormoran’s fondest memories.





	Enough

One of Cormoran’s fondest memories of Leda is the kind that would have had social services on their case for weeks after. There’d be casual meetings that were anything but, a masquerade to catch you out and make you stumble over an excuse. Then his teachers at school would throw annoyed or concerned glances, depending on the teacher, because they’d had to give up their lunch break to talk to a case officer. Then after a final visit where disapproving eyes would roam over the bedsit or flat or communal living area, they would be given a warning and a collection of telephone numbers varying from family counselling groups to after school pottery classes.

 

Fortunately only Leda and Cormoran were present for this moment and neither saw much to worry about. Cormoran tried not to think too much about the fact that if he had a fifteen year old son now he would recognise that there was something wrong in sitting drunk together on a school night. He’s finding that the older he gets the more he strays from understanding Leda’s decisions.

 

He’d been out with a group of boys who were two years ahead of him and Nick in school. Nick hated them and would disappear when Cormoran followed them at lunch break. Nick’s mum hated them too, this he knew because their names were casually dropped into conversations in a disapproving tone over a dinner of chicken nuggets and chips. If he went round on a Sunday he’d get a roast beef dinner and slightly less mothering.

 

He’d had a fight with Nick that day, called him a baby and a mummy’s boy and worse and told him to fuck off in front of the group of older boys. He’d felt an instant sharp stab of regret and shame at the look on Nick’s face as he looked from Cormoran to the boys and back again. The group had started to snicker as Nick walked away and Cormoran had just stood there.

 

He ended up spending the second half of school drinking in the park behind the prefabs that the local football team would use to change in while the older boys talked about a party they’d been to last weekend. He’d silently left after they started ranking the girls at school from sluttiest to ugliest.

 

It wasn’t his first time drinking but the buzz in his head and the wobble in his legs was still strange to him and as he walked home, cutting through council estates and alleyways, he felt the looks of every adult that passed. He climbed the stairs to the flat they’d moved into the month before and dropped his keys once and used the wrong key twice before he got the door open.

 

Cormoran walked into the living room and froze. Leda looked up from where she was perched on the couch and smiled and he let out the breath he’d been holding. She was just as drunk as he was and looking back it troubles him how thankful he was sometimes when she was drunk or stoned. He got away with a lot more than Nick ever did.

 

“Hiya darling.” She said and motioned for him to come sit beside her. He dropped down onto the couch and she patted his knee before reaching for the glass on the floor beside her leg.

 

“How was school?” Cormoran quirked an eyebrow as he looked at the clock on the shelf opposite them.

 

“Good.”

 

“That’s good.” She said and pulled a packet of cigarettes from under the pillow behind Cormoran’s back.

 

“The fuck’s my lighter?” She mumbled as she leant forward and started checking the floor. Cormoran spotted it beside her foot and grabbed it off the floor.

 

“Thanks baby, what’d I do without you?” She smiled again and then Cormoran wondered if she knew about the cigarettes he’d stolen from her in recent months.

 

“I saw Nick’s mum down the shop. I’m not being mean, I know she’s Nick’s mum but she can be a right cow sometimes.”

 

“What?” Cormoran asked, suddenly fearful that she already knew about the fight and had said something.

 

“Yeah. I was buying one lousy bottle of wine and she turns her nose up at me. Lady muck.”

 

“She jus’ doesn’t like t’ drink that’s all.” His voice sounded tired and slurred and Leda turned and looked at him.

 

“You alrigh’?” She asked with a narrowed gaze. Cormoran nodded his head but he knew he’d have to say something or she’d drag worse out of him.

 

“Had a fight with Nick.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well, you two’ll sort it out.” Leda said and reached again for her glass. A clod of something settled in Cormoran’s chest as she dismissed his worry so quickly.

 

“He’s a good friend.”

 

“Yeah, he is.” Cormoran agreed and a pool of shame churned through his stomach upon remembering his words to Nick earlier that day.

 

“You’re a good friend too, y’know?”

 

“Not as good as him.” Leda turned and looked at him as he said it.

 

“You are. I can tell. You’re a good person, Cormoran.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed.

 

“Yeah?” He asked.

 

“Yeah. Be even better if you did the washing up more often.” She said with a smile and he couldn’t help but laugh.

 

He ended up telling her all about the fight and the boys and that he’d been drinking. He saw the disappointment in her eyes when she asked how long he’d been drinking and he said since last year. He’d told her he hadn’t had anything stronger than cheap cider and this seemed to comfort her somewhat. She’d punched him playfully in the arm when he admitted stealing her cigarettes and then made him empty his pockets.

 

“That’s where my last lighter went you little thief.”

 

He laughed as she grabbed it from him and stuffed it in her pocket and then they sat watching a quiz show with her hand switching between her drink and untangling the tight curls on his head. Then the front door had slammed and Lucy ran in holding her triumphant maths quiz aloft.

 

“You’ve got the looks and the brains, just like your old mum.” Leda had said as she hugged Lucy close. Cormoran watched them together, Leda reading through the test and humming her approval and Lucy watching her with a beaming proud smile across her face.

 

Later that evening he cycled to Nick’s, almost falling off every time he had to stop at a red light because his head was still slightly fuzzy. Nick’s mum had put the fear of god into him for a few minutes before stepping aside and letting him in. He found Nick in his room setting up a board game that Cormoran hadn’t seen before. He told him that he was an idiot and didn’t mean what he said and he could call him anything he wanted in front of everyone at school the next day. Nick just told him to sit down and started explaining the rules. He stayed for dinner and then fell asleep on the couch, only waking when Nick’s dad dragged him up onto his feet and deposited him on the bottom bunk in Nick’s room. He vaguely heard Nick’s mum talking on the phone and fell asleep as ‘Leda’ and ‘sleepover’ were mentioned. He walked to school with Nick feeling like a dried up husk in a uniform that smelled of cider and sweat but he ignored the group of boys when they shouted at him on the way in and he never spoke to them again.

 

 

“What was she like?” Robin asked, leaning forward with a bright look in her eyes.

 

Ilsa had brought Leda’s name up in conversation during dinner and three dry white wines had given Robin a certain amount of courage. Strike looked across at Ilsa, her soft eyes watching his, and Nick who was shuffling salad around his plate and using all his strength not to change the subject. He sometimes wonders how they remember Leda. He knows how the world does, she was a tragic groupie who got pregnant with illegitimate rockstar offsprings and then overdosed. A small blip in the vaults of fame. But to those few that knew her she was different and a Cornwall Leda was very different to a Leda in London.

 

The memory of sitting on that couch with Leda as a drunk fifteen year old drifted into his mind as Robin looked down at her glass, no doubt feeling as though she had treaded too far.

 

Cormoran hadn’t asked Leda why she was drinking in the daytime and he’d gone to bed with a full stomach and his best friend sleeping near, so no dark clouds hung over that memory.

 

He took a breath and watched as Robin blushed slightly and pulled away from him. He wanted to tell her about Leda but what would he say? All of his memories of her were two-sided, the side he’d see and the side someone who wasn’t there would see. He thought of all the empty compliments he could pay his dead mother but Robin would know by Ilsa and Nick’s faces that they weren’t true. Someday he would tell Robin about her, the clothes she wore, her worst haircuts, the music she liked, the trips into London she took him on and the adventures in Cornwall. He’ll tell her about the good memories and the bad ones, because at some point he’ll have to tell someone. Not even Nick knows everything.

 

He thinks about all of this and puts his hand on Robin’s arm, stopping her retreat, and settles on “she loved me”, because that tells enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m still on the Leda Strike bandwagon. Here’s to hoping we get to learn more about her in the next book.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
